


Comrades

by grey_gazania



Series: This Girl Is Taking Bets [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 616/MCU mashup, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Gen, Genderswap, genderswap aLL THE THINGS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 03:40:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8129077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey_gazania/pseuds/grey_gazania
Summary: An injured Jane Barnes tracks down the WInter Soldier's old medic.





	

Jane Buchanan Barnes let herself into Yuri's darkened apartment and made her way to the kitchen, where she all but collapsed into one of his chairs. She didn't know where else to go, not with six bullets in her torso and what felt like a punctured lung. A hospital was out of the question, and Yuri was her medic. He'd always taken care of her. There was definitely a chance that he would shut her down and turn her back over to HYDRA, but given the fact that her other option right now was bleeding to death, she'd take the risk. And she couldn't explain why, but she had the suspicion that he wouldn't betray her.

He must have heard her break in, because he came walking into the kitchen a few minutes later, dressed in pajamas and slippers. There was a pistol in his pocket — she spotted it immediately — but he had nothing else with which to defend himself.

At the sight of her, he froze.

"Soldier," he said, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. He sounded surprisingly calm when he said, "I knew you'd come for me eventually."

She realized immediately what he meant. He thought she was here to kill him. She shook her head; she didn't even have any weapons drawn. But then it occurred to her that he probably couldn't see that in the dim light. "No," she said faintly; it was getting harder to breathe. "I need help."

At that, Yuri flicked on the light. Once he got a good look at her ashen face and the blood running down the leg of the chair and pooling on the linoleum, he swore. "Come on," he said, helping her upright. "The bathroom is this way."

She had to lean on him heavily, and by the time they reached the bathroom her legs were shaking like an aspic. Yuri's arm under her shoulders was the only thing that kept her from collapsing in a heap onto the tiles.

He laid a towel down on the floor for her to lie on and left to get his medical kit. When he returned, he began removing her clothes with his usual indifferent efficiency. The bra and both shirts were beyond saving, blood-soaked and full of bullet holes, so he simply cut them off her. He was a little more gentle as he stripped her lower half, trying not to jostle her wounds too much.

"How many bullets?" he asked, placing a rolled-up bathrobe under her feet.

"Six," she said breathlessly. "I think…my lung is punctured."

"Right." He began pulling out supplies, and she watched him through blurred eyes. The room was starting to spin, and she could feel her eyelids drifting shut. Yuri was examining her torso with careful hands, trying to locate the where the air bubble was trapped. When he found it, he jabbed a long needle into her chest, but the pain felt far away. She was so cold. If she could just sleep…

The last thing she felt before she passed out was the pinch of another needle entering her arm.

  


* * *

  


Yuri let out a sigh of relief when the needle entered her vein on the first try. Her blood was kept stored in HYDRA's facilities, not in his apartment, so a saline drip was the best he could do. It would at least increase her blood volume, if not her actual platelet and blood cell counts.

Her skin was clammy and mottled blue, and he wished desperately that he had an oxygen tank. The Winter Soldier was tough; he knew that better than anyone. But she'd lost a lot of blood, and she clearly wasn't getting enough air.

"What am I doing?" he muttered as he pulled out a pair of tweezers and began removing one of the bullets. He should turn her in, he really should. She'd vanished after the spectacular collapse of Project Insight, but she was undoubtedly the person who had been hitting HYDRA hard lately, taking out that base in Virginia and killing his colleagues around the city.

_Worry about that later,_ he thought as he looked at her motionless, blood-covered body. _You can't do anything at all with her if she's dead._

There were six bullets embedded in her chest and abdomen, and he found two more places where shots had passed clean through her.  He worked quickly but surely, his hands deft as he treated her injuries. He knew the soldier's body inside and out; he'd been her field medic for thirty-five years, after all. If anyone could keep her alive right now, it was him.

Two hours later, the bullets were all removed and the soldier's wounds were carefully bandaged. She was still unconscious, but some of the blue tinge had cleared from her face and she was breathing more easily. Yuri scrubbed the back of his wrist over his eyes and then took a look around the bathroom. God, it was covered in blood, and so was he. _At least tomorrow is Saturday_ , he thought, before washing his hands and going to get some rags and bleach. It was time to clean up — and time to decide whether to make a certain phone call.

  


* * *

  


Jane Buchanan Barnes blinked her eyes open and found herself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. She was… She was…

She was on Yuri's bathroom floor, dressed in clean sweatpants, with a blanket covering her and a needle still in her arm. Someone had rigged up an IV stand from the shower rack, and a mostly-empty bag of saline hung from it. Her head was clear, and she could breathe with only minimal pain — both good signs.

As she sat up, she accidentally knocked into the shower rack, and it went toppling to the floor with a clatter. "Devil take it," she muttered, trying to set it back upright without ripping the needle from her arm.

The door opened a few moments later, revealing Yuri standing there in the midday light. "Careful," he said, squatting down to help her. "I think I can probably take this out anyway."

She offered her arm in silence, and he slid the needle out with practiced hands.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

She tipped her head to one side, considering. "Better," she said. "Not dead, not back in HYDRA's hands… I'll take it."

He colored slightly and looked away, and she knew it had nothing to do with her topless state. "I thought about turning you over," he admitted. "My conscience and I had a long talk. But we decided not to."

"Thank you," she said. "Truly."

"I've got some clean shirts for you," he said, still not looking at her. "And a bra, but I wouldn't advise trying to wear that just yet. Not until you've healed up a little more. They're in my bedroom. You can dress while I get us some food."

She nodded and accepted the hand he offered to help her stand. "Down the hall and to the left," he said.

As she walked off, gingerly prodding at her wounds, she heard him pick up the phone.  " _Hello,_ " he was saying. " _Can I get two cheese pizzas please? Yes, large._ "

Pizza. She'd eaten pizza before, hadn't she? She thought so, but she wasn't certain. Her memories were coming back quickly, but many of them remained hazy.

Shrugging to herself, she continued on to the bedroom. Laid out on the bed she found four t-shirts, two sports bras, several pairs of underwear, and a hooded sweatshirt — all black — as well as two pairs of jeans. Her weapons were laid out on the dresser, and she picked out three of her knives before she pulled on one of the shirts, wincing a little, and took a seat on the edge of the bed. She looked around curiously. The room was fairly spartan, but there was an art print on the wall and a few photographs placed around the room, most showing a boy and a girl at various ages.

Children. Did Yuri have children? She'd never thought of her support team members' lives outside of HYDRA before, and she lifted one of the pictures up and turned it over. There was a note printed on the back. _To Uncle Yuri—_

A niece and nephew, then. Not a son and daughter.

The bell rang, and she waited until Yuri had finished paying the delivery man and had closed the door before she joined him in the kitchen. She caught a whiff of the pizza, and her stomach growled. "That smells delicious," she said.

"After what you've spent the last God-only-knows how many years eating? I'll bet it does," he said. "And you were out for almost thirty-six hours, so I figure you must be hungry. Pizza's not the healthiest food, but it's fast, and it's not like you have to worry about your cholesterol." He set plates down on the table and then went to fetch two tall glasses of water.

She sat, noticing as she did that there was no trace of her blood on the linoleum. "So today is…Sunday?" she asked.

Yuri nodded. "October 13th, specifically." When he noticed that she wasn't eating, he waved a hand at her. "Go on, help yourself. You don't need to wait for me."

She complied — a habit she was still working on breaking — and took a bite of the pizza. She nearly dropped it a moment later, because it tasted _amazing_. She dug in with gusto, and she was on her fourth piece by the time Yuri sat down and took a slice of his own.

They ate in silence until he suddenly said, "Listen, soldier. I want—"

"Jane."

"What?"

"Jane," she repeated around a mouthful of pizza. "My name is Jane."

"Jane," he said, and she couldn't quite decipher the expression on his face. "Listen, Jane. I know it won't undo anything, but I want to apologize for— for everything, really."

She looked at him impassively. "Why the change of heart?" she asked.

"I thought you were a volunteer," he said. "Like the Project Zephyr men. Like the other Winter Soldiers." He set his slice of pizza down, and he wouldn't meet her eyes when he said, "It wasn't until Pierce took over and you started growing unstable more frequently that I began thinking that maybe you weren't. And after everything that happened with Captain America, how seeing him broke straight through your programming… Well. That basically confirmed it."

She was silent for a long moment. Finally, she said, "You're right; I wasn't a volunteer. I was a prisoner of war. Doctor Zo—" She broke off; she still couldn't say Zola's name without a feeling of suffocating panic. "The doctor experimented on me. He tortured me." She shook her head. "No. I never volunteered."

"I'm sorry," Yuri whispered, his eyes fixed on the table. "God. I just— I'm so sorry."

He didn't ask her for forgiveness, and she was glad of it. She wasn't certain she'd be able to give it, if only because she didn't really remember how it worked. But she could give him _something_.

"You never hurt me," she said and, when he made a soft noise of skepticism, she insisted, "You didn't. You always took care of me when I was hurt."

"That was my _job_ , sol— Jane."

"Keeping me in working order was your job. But you— I remember you doing more than that. Massaging the muscle spasms out of my back. Holding my hair out of my face when I got sick. _That?_ That wasn't your job."

He gave a hollow laugh. "The fact that you perceive that as me going above and beyond my duties speaks volumes about how we treated you."

"But you still did it," she said. "And you're helping me now. You haven't turned me back over to HYDRA, even though we both know that they'll kill you if they find out you let me go."

"I owe you better than that."

"I'm willing to call us even," she said.

Yuri shook his head. "I don't think we'll ever be even," he said. "But I'll keep trying." He finally took a bite of his pizza, and then he said, "Stay here."

"What?"

"Stay here," he repeated. "At least for another two or three days, until you're in better shape. You can rest, and we can replenish your supplies. You're not healed yet, Jane."

Jane Buchanan Barnes considered his offer for several long moments. “All right,” she said. “I'll stay."  
  
  
  



End file.
